What If?
by claire sorrentino
Summary: Time travel. Tseng's given everything he had to the Company. Just when he doesn't think there is anything left to give, Rufus decides it is time to change the past. And Tseng's just the person to make it happen.
1. Chapter 1

**What If?**

**Chapter One: Twenty Year Anniversary **

It was twenty years to the day. Tseng grimaced, catching his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Physically he still looked the same. Impossibly straight black hair, fathomless black eyes. Stern mouth. The same red tattoo branded in the center of his forehead. Inside, he felt less and less alive with each passing day. His suit fit him like skin. His tie tightened past the point of comfort around his throat.

He quickly dried his hands, stepping back into the hallway. It was narrow, darker with coal powered lights than the old ShinRa building had ever been. Reno popped out of a door several feet away, a slutty blond tumbling after him, giggling. Reno was drunk, eyes glazed, no grief visible.

"Not at work, Reno," he reprimanded softly. He brushed past both of them, entering his office and reigning in an intense desire to slam the door, pull his gun and start shooting until he ran out of bullets or died. It didn't matter which came first. Instead he sat at his desk, powering up his computer and starting on the pile of never-ending paperwork.

He wondered – not for the first or last time – why he even bothered. ShinRa was dying. The Planet was dying. Peace, always a fleeting ideal, drifted further and further away. And Elena was dead. Stupid, really. He should have paid more attention to Wutai. He had been born there. He should have known that the only way to stop Wutai was to stamp out each and every last man, woman, and child.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. That wasn't really the answer. Killing everyone in Wutai wouldn't have changed anything. Because when all was said and done, people couldn't live together. In the years since ShinRa's inevitable decline, the WRO tried to step up and keep the peace. But for all his talents, Reeve Tuesti was a city planner. He didn't have the cold edge needed to end certain problems before they started.

There couldn't be good without evil. Right now they had rampant chaos. Everyone struggling to fill the power vacuum left by ShinRa. Tseng was surprised it had taken this long, but then again, Sephiroth had caused quite the commotion and left quite the swath of destruction. It had been enough to quell the thirst for vengeance for several long, tedious years.

The door opened.

Tseng's eyes flickered towards the intruder. He wanted it to be Reno or Rude. Then he could yell at them, take out his frustration on them. Instead it was President Rufus ShinRa, no longer the ruthless teenager that had been appointed vice-president.

"Mr. ShinRa," he said, voice smooth as honey. "To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?"

Rufus closed the door. "Wutai has invaded Edge."

Tseng swore.

"They're killing children in the streets. They intend to 'cleanse' this world of everything ShinRa related. Including people that used to rely on Shinra blindly, thereby allowing ShinRa to rape this Planet and suppress the great Wutai people."

In a different time, Tseng would have known about the attack before the President. Now he just leaned back in his chair, mind whirling through possible responses.

"We don't have an army," Rufus said. "We don't have SOLDIER or the weapons program. What I have at my disposal are three Turks." He ran a hand through his hair. "And as good as you are Tseng, you can't do this."

Tseng privately agreed. "What do you suggest, Mr. ShinRa?" he asked even though it was his job to suggest ideas to Rufus.

"Hn?"

Tseng leaned forward. "Do you have a plan?" He didn't care one way or another. He'd always scoffed at Vincent Valentine for locking himself in a coffin and sleeping through the ripples caused by his mistake. What kind of Turk just gave up and walked away? Well, now, with the years slipping by, Tseng was starting to see the allure of just walking away.

"Possibly," Rufus said. His blue eyes locked with Tseng's. "You look tired."

Tseng didn't answer. He felt tired. Last night, he'd pulled a sealed box of letters from the back of his closet and almost – almost – burned the entire thing. Last night he'd almost put a bullet in his mouth. He could feel defeat in his bones. What had he thought when he left home? That he'd make something of himself? Just work hard and good things will come. Be ruthless. Do the things no one else will do and then one day you can have your happily ever after.

Rufus set an emerald green materia on the desk. "Tseng, I need you with me. Are you still loyal to the Company?"

Great. After twenty years of service his loyalty was being questioned. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Of course, Mr. ShinRa. It is . . . too late for me to leave, even if I were inclined to do so."

"Perfect." Rufus stood up and started pacing, his white coat flaring. "I must admit that I've been unable to figure out exactly what to do for a while. First it was Geostigma. And then guilt – yes, even I felt guilt. How could I have done this to the Planet, blah, blah, blah. And then I realized that the Company did so much good. We just went a little askew."

A little askew was an understatement.

"So I thought, what if . . ." He smirked. "Powerful words. What if."

Tseng personally thought they were useless words. What if he'd never left home? Would he be first in line to the throne of Wutai by now? Would he have a little sister with a big mouth and a thirst to steal materia? Would he be swept away in a marriage of convenience?

Hard to believe he'd left Wutai because he wanted to marry for love. Hard to believe he'd given everything up for something he'd never been allowed to touch while at ShinRa.

"Tseng, I'm going to change the past," Rufus said.

That caught the Director of the Turks's attention, but barely. Everyone wanted to change the past. "Pardon?"

Rufus picked up the materia. "You're going to help me." He rolled the green stone between his fingers and toxic green light began to spill from its depths, spinning around the room and the two men. Tseng felt a jerk just above his navel, an irresistible pull. He blinked and when he opened his eyes, he was in a storage closet, Rufus ShinRa standing between a mop and broom with a sharkish grin on his face.

"Rufus," Tseng said, dropping all pretense of title and propriety. "Why are we in a supply closet?"

"Your office must have been converted from a supply closet," Rufus said, waving a hand dismissively. "Come on. You have work to do."

Tseng raised an eyebrow. "And what, pray tell, would that be?"

"You have to kill me . . . and yourself too."

Tseng pulled his gun in a smooth, practiced motion. Rufus put his hand on the barrel, lowering it. "Not us, our old selves. We, Tseng, are in the past now. What you're going to do is find and kill me – the me that is in this timeline – and then you're going to take yourself out. We'll both step into the places of our younger selves and poof. We're in a position to make 'what if' more than mere daydreams."

At that moment the supply closet door opened and a very startled man in an old ShinRa cleaning uniform stared slack jawed at them. Tseng grimaced, grabbing the man by the throat and yanking him into the closet. He shoved his gun into the man's mouth. "Who is the highest ranking SOLDIER?"

The man garbled something.

Tseng sighed. "If you scream, I'll rip your tongue out and make you write everything down." He removed the gun when the man nodded vigorously.

"S-sephiroth. General Sephiroth."

Tseng didn't exactly expect that. "Who is the Director of Administrative Research?"

"The Turks?" the guy whimpered. "I don't know . . . Vinny?"

"Veld?" Tseng suggested.

"Y-yeah, that's it."

"Who is the vice president?"

"Rufus ShinRa –"

Tseng reached over, snapping the man's neck effortlessly. He positioned the body against the wall, dusting his hands off. "Let's go, Mr. President," Tseng said. "I have work to do."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two: First Steps**

For the first time in twenty years, Tseng wore stolen clothes. The black leather pants didn't breathe – they suffocated, trapping sweat against his skin. The shirt was plaid. The harsh cotton chafed at his collar. He was naked without his dark tie knotted at his throat. He'd pulled his glossy black hair back, tucking it under a billed hat to shadow his features.

He drove to Midgar by himself in a stolen grey pickup truck that rattled and backfired and sputtered going up hills. Getting Rufus out of Edge had been a test of his considerable skills. Before Sephiroth destroyed Midgar, driving thousands of refugees from the city, Edge had been an affluent suburb of the sprawling, dirty metropolis. ShinRa had a beautiful office building along the edge of the city. Most of the top floor executive offices had ceiling to floor windows to showcase the vista view of the sea.

Tseng's old office hadn't been that high up. Unlike most of ShinRa's key departments, Administrative Research had always preferred to be low key. That was the only thing that saved them. Most of the building had constantly wary security guards, motion sensor cameras, and security bots. But they were on a relatively unsecured floor in this version of the building. And it was always easier to sneak out of a building than to sneak in.

For his part, Rufus was completely unconcerned with the position he'd put Tseng in. He was, in most ways, the same petulant teenager who inherited his father's company and proceeded to run it into the ground. Although, to be fair, it wasn't entirely Rufus's fault. Still, the President gave impossible orders. Stop Sephiroth. Find the Promised Land. Capture Cloud. Destroy that barrier. Get Jenova. It fell to Tseng to execute those seemingly simplistic orders. Of course, he'd never been ordered to kill himself before. But in all honesty, it should have been one of the easiest to execute orders ever.

Only it wasn't going to be as simple as sticking his gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. No. Tseng would get the dubious pleasure of first breaking into his own apartment, torturing himself for information, and then watching the light fade from his eyes.

And that was just the first step. He'd mapped it out in his head. Step one: Kill yourself. Step two: infiltrate the Turks – because of course that wasn't going to be easy. Step three: Kill the teenage Rufus. Step four: Kill Rufus's father. Step five: Become Director of the Turks, which probably meant killing Veld. After all that . . . then he'd be able to focus on actually changing the future, which would most likely involve killing and recruiting the right assets.

He ditched the truck on the outskirts of Midgar and slipped into the city through the sewers. As a Turk, he was no stranger to traversing nasty places. The Midgar sewers were some of the worst on the Planet. But even years after Midgar's destruction, he still knew them better than his own mother's face. He knew every twist and turn in the passages, every sinkhole, every storage room, every rusting ladder. Everything.

He'd forgotten the smell though.

By the time he emerged in the Sector Seven slums he was ready to scream. Since that wasn't advisable, he gritted his teeth, pushing his tongue to the roof of his mouth. He strolled through the slums, forcing his shoulders into the casual, rolled look Reno made look effortless.

He loitered in the slums for a couple of hours, listening for clues as to exactly _when _he was. Then he rode the train around the city for a couple more hours, still listening. From a gaggle of young teenage girls he learned that LOVELESS was opening this weekend, and that Commander Genesis Rhapsodes would have been going if he were still alive.

So it was after Genesis's desertion then.

He changed his posture when he left the train, forcing it into the steady, confident gait of a cocky Midgar citizen. One that lived above the Plate. Possibly a low-level manager for ShinRa even. His black eyes analyzed everyone he passed, ears straining for any hint of a conversation to narrow the timeframe.

Surprisingly he _saw_ Zack before he _heard_ him. The SOLDIER was wearing a dark purple uniform, his black hair spiked. Tseng felt a twinge of emotion. The last time he'd seen Zack, the boy's uniform was tattered, his body riddled with bullets. Tseng stopped making friends after that.

But was he friends with Zack in this time? Had the mission to Banora taken place yet?

He didn't know what he was hoping for. Ideally it would be post-Banora. That way he could try and do something about Angeal Hewley's desertion.

Zack started waving his hands vigorously. "I found another Wutai spy!" he hollered. A woman he was standing beside took off running, pulling a forest green uniform from her massive purse. She yanked it on, snapping a collapsible spear from a holster on her back.

The Wutai were getting stupider – why was her uniform in her purse and even more importantly, why the hell did she put it on? It just made her stick out in the crowd. He was glad he'd left the country before he was inducted into their madness. Of course, a Wutai ninja in Midgar meant the war with Wutai was officially over. ShinRa was in mop-up mode. In fact, now that he thought about it, hadn't he interrogated a female ninja that Zack caught?

He watched Zack chase the ninja spy into an ambush. The woman was taken into custody. Tseng shadowed the SOLDIER Second bringing the woman for interrogation. SOLDIER's were notoriously bad at detecting a shadow. It made it easy to keep an eye on them. Zack would have been an exception, but thankfully he didn't have this mission. He just helped out like some overenthusiastic puppy.

The woman was brought to Level 19, the Department of Administrative Research. This was the dangerous part. The SOLDIER put her in a room and handcuffed her to a chair. Tseng went to the observation room. A lone Wutai ninja wouldn't get a supervised interrogation.

He rubbed at his chin, feeling the beginnings of a 5 o'clock shadow. It irritated him almost as bad as the leather pants and cotton shirt. The _plaid_ cotton shirt. Still, he didn't have time to shave. He was doing his own reconnaissance for the first time in over a decade. Well, discounting that disastrous trip to the Northern Crater to find what remained of Jenova.

After a while, his younger self walked into the interrogation room. Tseng's breath caught. He'd forgotten being that young. His black hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail. His younger self wore the suit and tie of the Turks, but it was black instead of blue. Tseng briefly tried to remember when they'd changed to blue.

But it didn't matter, did it?

Younger Tseng didn't speak to the spy. He opened a manila folder, arranging the contents.

She spit at him. "Traitor. Leviathan will drown you in your own blood! Your poor, poor mother took her own life for shame. You disgrace your country, your people -" She tried to lunge at younger Tseng, but her restraints held her back and the chair was bolted to the floor.

The Turk's black eyes flickered from the file to the woman, impassive, and then back to the file. She continued ranting, calling him every dirty and loathsome name she could think of. Finally he looked up. "Rosalie Kino –"

"Do not speak my name –"

"You are the second daughter of Wutai General Ryu Kino. You fought at Fort Tamblin. You're part of the useless Wutai remnants."

Her scowl deepened, eyes boring into his. "You're the useless one, Tseng Kisaragi." Her eyes, Tseng remembered, were the color of freshly tilled earth, ringed by heavy black lashes.

He leaned back, evaluating her. "I do not go by that name. And honestly, I'm surprised to hear you refer to me as such. Did Lord Godo change his mind about disowning me?" He paused, watching her reaction. "No. I didn't think so. So, let's start over. I am Tseng of the Turks. You have information you're going to give me. You can start talking now or we can move to more . . . painful methods of interrogation. But I feel it's only fair to tell you that you don't have information worth sparing your life."

Rosalie gasped. "My father is the General. He leads the resistance while your father wallows in defeat. The information I could give you is worth more than your petty, traitorous life –"

"Unlikely." Tseng shut the folder, glancing at his watch. "I don't really have time for this, Rosalie. I have a dinner appointment scheduled with a co-worker. If you're sure that your information is enough to spare your life, you better hurry up and speak."

"I won't tell you anything."

"Ah. Aha," Tseng said. He unholstered his gun. "That's too bad." He made a show of checking his clip, brushing his fingers across the bullets. "Well, please give my regards to Leviathan" He aimed the gun and pulled the trigger.

Rosalie screamed, terror making her eyes white. "Wait!"

There was no gunshot. Tseng scowled, removing his clip to reveal the gun had jammed. "Lucky you, I guess you'll have time to pray now."

Rosalie simpered. "Wait, Tseng, wait."

He pushed the clip back in, pointing the gun at her. "I don't think so. In fact, I think that my father arranging my marriage with you was . . . fortunate in the sense that it made me leave. Still, I'm in the process of erasing my previous life and, to be perfectly frank, since you're a part of that, I'd like to erase you. No hard feelings, right?"

Rosalie started to talk, tears streaming down her cheeks. She told him where her father's base was, promising that, if he killed her, she would be avenged. She told him information about what kinds of supplies they had available. She told him who was leading the resistance and who was just accepting ShinRa rule. And once she started repeating her story, Tseng put a bullet between her eyes.

In the observation room, Tseng turned away. He'd gotten what he needed today. A rough timeline and a rough gauge on where he was in his life. Apparently he was still upset with getting disowned. Apparently he still was cleaning up his past so no little piece would wiggle to the surface.

He left the ShinRa building, heading into the slums. At a cheap hotel, he showered, shaving his face with a straight razor. He didn't look like he was nineteen. That was potentially a problem. He closed his eyes, exhaling through his nose. Rufus didn't look like he was a teenager either. But that was just another wrinkle in this change the past plan that he was going to have to iron out before they could actually change the past.

**Author's Note:** Thanks to everyone who's shown interest in this story. I hadn't actually thought about the effects of Tseng killing himself and Rufus in the past, but now that it's been brought up, I have some pretty good ideas regarding that. Please continue reading - and leave a review. It always makes my day :)


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